


Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is Sad

by DWEmma



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 16:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15889764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/pseuds/DWEmma
Summary: Illyria has pulled Gunn out of hell, but Wesley is still sad. Who else can she pull out of hell for him?Set some point after act 1 of Time Bomb.





	Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is Sad

“What troubles you.” Illyria enters Wesley’s office without knocking, and finds him massaging his temples with his eyes closed. 

“Can’t you knock?” Wesley says in a slow and disparaging voice. “Illyria, I can’t speak to you right now.” He opens his drawer and pulls out his bottle of scotch. The expensive one he saves for special occasions. The one he never remembered how he got, until now. The one he now remembers that Lilah gave him multiple bottles of as “I’m sorry for being evil” gifts. The ones he remembers spending hours properly thanking her for. 

“Why do you drink poison again? Did I not save the man you call Gunn from his hell dimension. Did that not make you happy?” 

“That did make me happy. Happier. I’m very pleased to have Gunn back. That was kind of you, Illyria.” Wesley pours himself a glass of the scotch. 

“I do not understand this concept of kind. But I beat down the demon who was stealing Gunn’s heart and made him wear the necklace because you said that having him bakc would make you happy. But you do not look happy.” A human would have sit down at the chair across from Wesley’s desk at this point. Illyria keeps hovering about halfway into the room, not as if she’s unsure if she’s welcome in, but more as if she doesn’t understand how humans use body language when they speak. She gets an eerie smile on her face and suggests, “Would you be happier if I returned the Gunn to the hell dimension? I can go to any dimension with ease.”

Wesley had been staring at the middle distance, the scotch hovering near his lips, but at this he snaps to attention. “You can, can’t you.” His face looks like that of a man who just rediscovered the concept of hope. He’s forgotten how to work smiles out of the lower half of his mouth, but his eyes shine. 

* *

All in all, hell could be worse. 

Lilah’s heard of hell dimensions where they lull you into a false sense of security, showing you a perfect family life that you never had in the real world, only to perform bodily horrors upon you on the regular. She can’t imagine how horrifying it would be to be in one of those dimensions: she could never cope with a perfect family life. 

But honestly, other than the initial sting of the demotion, being Files and Records at Wolfram and Hart: Hell Division wasn’t the worst way to spend her time in hell. 

They thought it would be a punishment because of how stressed out she was that night that she spent digging through all of Angel’s files back when she was alive, only to find out that Files and Records knew everything by heart. But Lilah had always been a stressed out student: that doesn’t mean she didn’t love getting her hands dirty with research. Knowing more than the other guy was the name of the game, and Lilah has always loved games. 

Honestly the offense that they thought she needed a brain upgrade to dump the contents of every record in the folders in order to take over the job was really the worst part of her job. If they’d just let her read every file in there once, it would have done the same as the brain dump. But they wanted her up to speed yesterday after she finished her job getting Angel and Company to sign on to the Los Angeles branch, and while she’s a professional, she has to admit that maybe she wasn’t at her best the day after she got the only man she ever loved to all but confess to loving her, only to have to wipe his memory of why he was with her and why he loved her in order to make the deal happen. Because flames eternal and such, her contract was forever, and she needed to get the job done, love of her life’s memories or no. 

So maybe the brain upgrade was well timed. She was able to fill her mind so full of all the files and records that there wasn’t any room in it for Him. Honestly, who could even remember his name, at this point? There was so much to do at the only law firm in hell. 

She had heard inklings of an ancient god who crossed the boundaries into Hell, and how she had pulled an employee of the Los Angeles branch out of one of those domestic/body horror hells, but the files weren’t complete on what had really happened, or who was involved. (What was going on with Angel running the place? Complete files are a must.) It caused a bit of a fuss on their side, but since it was an employee of Wolfram and Hart and also due to rumors that he wasn’t even the person meant to be in hell, no one really pursued it. It’s not like a dead person had escaped. 

And that wasn’t even Lilah’s job, anyhow. When the record was complete, she would read it and add it to her growing database. She loves that her high heels and pencil skirts were finally the exactly perfect outfit for the job she had: a librarian. Maybe she should consider a bun. Too cliche? 

It is that moment that Illyria breaks through the folds of reality and into Lilah’s department. 

“Fred?” Lilah says, at first confused and amused. “Interesting fashion statement.” She studies her new look, with the blue on her hair and on her face, and muses that it’s a good thing that hadn’t been her look a few years ago: might have ruined the bedsheets to imitate that. 

“Not Winnifred Burkle. She is the Shell. I am Illyria,” Not!Fred says in voice that is definitely not Fred. 

Lilah’s eyes flickers as she retrieves the file on Illyria. “Illyria the Merciless, one of the legendary Old Ones that plagued the world before the time of man. One of the most feared and worshiped in her time. Ruled over modern Southern California at her temple Vahla Ha’nesh and commanded and Army of Doom.” Lilah pauses for a second, her customary smirk appearing on her face. “Seems like the Army of Doom is now an Army of dust and you’ve been stuck in a Sarcophagus since the beginning of time.” 

“I am out, now. I reside in the body that was once Winifred Burkle.” 

“I can see that. What brings you to Wolfram and Hart: Hell Branch?” There is something about how unbothered Lilah is by the whole thing that confuses Illyria. She has come accustomed to humans reacting to the death of someone they knew and her using her face with anger or sadness or remorse. This woman shows none of this. Perhaps she had not known Winifred Burkle, as she had been lead to believe. 

“Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is sad. That is a human emotion that causes humans to drink poison and try to hurt the feelings I no longer possess. But Wesley has been very helpful in my transition--”

“That’s Wesley. Always so helpful,” Lilah snarks out, still not sure why Illyria is down here, but pretty sure that Wesley was screwing this ancient god. What else does he do when he’s sad but fall into the arms of the first woman to offer to kill his enemies for him? 

“He is very helpful, yes. But I want him to stop drinking poison and not try to hurt the feelings I cannot have. I attempted to look and act like Fred so that he would be happy again, but that only made him sadder, and he told me to never do it again.” 

“Join the club,” Lilah intoned, not so loud that Illyria would understand what she said. The downside of Hell is that there isn’t any Scotch. Lilah could certainly do with some of what she assumed Illyria meant when she said poison right now. 

“So I have come here. They had retrieved a man named Lindsay from part of hell,”

“Lindsay was in hell? Oh that’s rich,” Lilah laughs, but Illyria ignores her. 

“...Only to replace him with a man named Gunn. No one was sad that Lindsay was in hell, but everyone was sad that Gunn was in hell. So I went to hell and brought him back to them. But once the memory spell was broken and my shell gained back memories of a boy named Connor, Wesley became more sad.”

Lilah thinks back to hiring on Vail to perform the spell that cleared Connor out of everyone’s memory. How sad Wesley was when she found him, away from his friends, his support system, knowing that it was his fault Connor was in a hell dimension. At the time she had said that she heard it was confusing to have moral quandaries, but that was just her usual bullshit. She might have taken up with him because he was sexy as hell, but watching him go from a sad drinking mess to her sexy action hero lover was one of the reasons she fell in love with him. The strength of character it took to pull himself out of his sorrow and make something of himself again was not just sexy as hell, but something she valued in him. She hates to know he’s going through all those emotions again, and hates herself for the part she took in it. 

But you don’t show weakness to a God. “I do have that effect on men. Get to the point, God-King of the Primordium. Where do I come in?” 

“I have come to take you to him. He claims you would make him less sad,” Illyria states blankly, as if this was the most obvious statement in the world. 

Lilah is speechless. After all they went through, even knowing that Wesley loved her enough to Die Hard his way up to files and records to burn her contract, to release her from hell, she never considered that she made him happy. 

Lilah pauses for one moment, thinking of how much she does enjoy her job, and how, when this ultimately goes pear shaped and she gets dragged back down to hell, how her job might not be so cushy. She looks at the woman who inhabits the body of what was her only rival for Wesley’s affections, telling her that she has broken into hell to take her to Wesley because she would make him less sad. She nods and takes Not!Fred’s hand. 

* * *

And moments later, there he is. Drinking the Scotch that she bought him, or at least a bottle just like it, looking all rumpled and unshaven and broken, like he was the first time he took her to his bed. But instead of a strangle that lead to hate sex, this time he looks up at her and smiles. “Lilah,” he says, shaking his head a little as if he can’t believe she’s there. 

She smiles back at him, and he pushes out of his chair and crosses the distance between them, cupping the back of her head in his hand, and kisses her, not with sexual passion but just to taste her, to prove she’s really there. He wraps his arms around her, holding her to him with familiarity and comfort, despite the fact that he’d so rarely allowed himself to hold her non sexually in their time together. 

He pries his eyes off her, and smiles at Illyria. “Thank you, Illyria. Thank you.” 

“There are tears in your eyes. You said bringing you this Lilah would make you happy,” Illyria looks confused, with her mouth hanging a bit open. 

“I’m terrifically happy. Humans are funny that way. Sometimes we cry when we’re happy.”

“You are ridiculous creatures.” Illyria keeps watching them hold each other. “I shall leave you to your copulation.” 

Wesley kissed Lilah on the forehead. “I can’t believe I forgot you. Well, not you, but us. I forgot what you meant to me. I forgot I loved you.”

Lilah didn’t want to start anything with lies. “You know I was the one who hired Vail in the first place.” 

“I don’t care. You’ve done so much worse. And I don’t care. I just...love you.” And he kissed her deeply, “Let’s go home.”


End file.
